


odes to my lost lover

by blackcanarys



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Season/Series 03, RipFic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-18 10:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21509482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackcanarys/pseuds/blackcanarys
Summary: Family fought, but family always reconciled. Family had their squabbles, but they always had each other’s back.God, does she miss him.Or: Sara Lance buries Rip Hunter. Set after season three.
Relationships: Rip Hunter/Sara Lance
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	odes to my lost lover

Sara thinks of him sometimes—Rip. In the early hours of morning, in the witching hours where nothing made sense without company, and it’s hardly intentional. Her mind drifts, and when nights like these came, sleep didn’t.

Her room’s the same as it’s always been—neat, tidy, but ultimately alone. Everyone’s busy today, and she doesn’t mind that. Not when sleep came peacefully again, and she didn’t have to worry about her regrets following her every move ( _out of sight, out of mind_ , she reminds herself, because there are things no one else needed to know in full and this was one of those things) on a daily basis, invading her dreams and making roost in the upper echelons of her thoughts.

She stares at the alcohol cabinet, concealed under the table, and in the captain’s chair, she doesn’t feel like moving. How many times had she and Rip been there, the two of them talking about anything and everything, defiantly pretending they were okay when they were so clearly falling apart at the seams, letting their ghosts and regrets out and ignoring it happened when the light of day came? How many times did he inevitably drift to his family, the one he had created, and forgotten that the waverider crew was his family too?

Family fought, but family always reconciled. Family had their squabbles, but they always had each other’s back.

 _God_ , does she miss him.

Maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s the sudden shaking of her regrets, but she expects him to show up here, disheveled, clearly already been crying, depressive symptoms on full display. But, as their unspoken code went, they never talked about it. They’d talk about their family, their backgrounds, their mission, but never in head-on collisions. Stories about children might prompt that day Jonas saw the stars, her and Laurel playing as kids, or they might fall to someone else in the team, but they’d talk at their own pace, thoughts running so far ahead of their mouths.

He should be here, a human train wreck in the making, pretending he was okay and Sara going along with it because her grief held her in a choke hold and she gladly let it, if only because she knew she was still alive, that she could feel the great sadness that was the regrets and the what-ifs she held onto forevermore.

Sara’s pretty good with silence. It’s hard to come by on the waverider, of course, but by itself, it could easily be weaponized into revealing secrets, slowly, or in outbursts because _it got to be too much_. And today, she finds that she can’t stand it. He should be here, but he isn’t. He should be far beyond the limit for how many drinks were allotted, but he isn’t, because the bottle sits there, unopened instead of on the brinks of being emptied. The books and the papers are long gone; clutter dumped in the captain’s bedroom, because for some godforsaken reason no one wanted the room of a man who had committed suicide. There was too much there, Sara knows from the one afternoon she’d been in there—she’d left the books and papers scattered hazardously around, but she lingered. She couldn’t help but linger. The room smelled like _him_ —cologne barely disguising the perennial scent of alcohol, ancient tomes in languages she didn’t understand collecting dust in and beside the bookshelves, photographs tucked between his notebooks, dates and names inscribed for no one to see.

Maybe this was what it was like to be dead: a ghost, a memory, but never truly forgotten. Old things collecting dust until they were meaningless, trash to be thrown out in spring cleaning, laughs and snide remarks left to the dustbin of history. Objects of sentimentality kept and treasured, and carried to the grave.

If this was what it was like to be dead, then Sara wanted to be immortal. There’s more to it, but Sara died once. She was resurrected, but there is a startling clarity of Before and After.

 _Before_ and _After_ , she thinks, and the thought makes her want to laugh, cry or some combination of both.

* * *

 _Before_ , Sara thinks, and it’s a glorius word. Vague, empty, meanings that varied and fluctuated in ways that meant simultaneously everything and nothing; memories she holds to her chest, one of their last conversations coming back to her.

She’s not alone, not by any means.

Company doesn’t stop the empty feeling that blossoms inside her, though, this feeling that Rip should be here, even if he’s screwed up some, and made mistakes. And really, what else was there to feel besides the fact that _fuck_ , besides the fact he had a decent amount of things to answer for in his creation of the Time Bureau, she still misses him.

She owes him too, but Sara’s been haunted by ghosts for as long as she can remember. Rip Hunter is just another dead man, whose name she can’t escape, whose memory that weighs heavy within her, the shade of a ghost she can’t shake off.

What she wouldn’t give for more time. Time, to ask him why he had saved them all in 1992, knowing that he wouldn’t survive, but that defeating Mallus was worth the sacrifice. Justified, a sacrifice that was utterly worth it in the end.

She wants to ask, above all things, _why_. Why had he done it, despite that she’d turned him over the Bureau, despite the fact that he’d never stopped caring for the Legends, bringing Wally aboard too.

Why, she wants to ask, but the list of unanswered questions is long, and she couldn’t run through all of them even if she wanted to.

* * *

 _After_ , Sara thinks, shouldn’t be this easy.

Rip doesn’t even have a body to bury, and the clothes he wore in 1992 are evaporated too, but if there’s anything she can do to soothe his ghost to rest, it’s this.

An empty grave, next to those of Miranda and Jonas. The headstone doesn’t even have a date on it, for fucks sake— just two words, Rip Hunter, chiseled onto stone, a living testament to a man who had saved her life, to a man who she owed _something_ to, a debt she’s not sure whether she can repay or rather leave behind.

_Goodbye, Captain Hunter._

The words don’t stick to her throat, but they don’t come either. She doesn’t begrudge Rip of his actions, and he’d been all too aware of the consequences on his end too — but what’s the point of ghosts, if they can’t be exorcised?

She sighs, deeply. She’s not sure what to say, or where to start. Hello? Goodbye? Some combination of insulting him, or honoring his memory, legacy?

There’s a tree covering the graves, the hill absent of people or noise. Nate had donated flowers, three bouquets sitting on their respective graves with clearly defined dates.

She’d left Rip’s empty of them — he’d been timeless in that aspect, traveling and making mistakes along the way, his papers physically placed into the hole that’d been dug, the closest thing she can do to filling it.

A bottle of gin, too, but she’d kept the rest.

One of his trench coats covers everything, tan sticking through the deep brown of the dirt, sifting along the folds of the coat.

(Sara admits to burning his suits, because they weren’t _him_ , and really, no one else was going to wear them.)

The sky is clear, and the shadow the tree leaves her in the shade.

“Hey,” she starts, and it’s hardly the worst start.

She sighs, nervously this time. “I- I don’t know what to say, Rip. I don’t know why you did what you did, but it’s done.”

Her shoulders shrug, and it almost feels like a breeze is coming.

“The last time we talked,” she continues, “we didn’t finish that. I wish we did,” she scoffs here, “but it probably would’ve ended in an argument.”

The wind comes a little stronger now.

“I hope you find peace,” she starts, “and I hope you’re happy, wherever you are. You know, we were your family too, right? We fought, but we were always family.”

Her voice cracks, and it’s _fine_.

“I’ll tell the others where you’re buried, if they want to visit. You saved my life once,” she says, turning her gaze to the scenery the hill provided. Miles and miles of quiet, far from the city, hidden and obscure.

Not how a Legend should go out, she thinks, but Rip Hunter’s dead, and she’s burying him. It’s probably the last thing she’ll do for him, but all things considered, he had a legacy and she wants to protect it, as muddled as it was.

“Thank you for saving my life.” Her voice is quiet, blonde wisps hanging behind her ears. “Thank you for showing me a future, one that I didn’t know was possible. Thank you for giving me the waverider, for the family I now have.”

 _You’re part of that family too_ , she thinks, but the words don’t come out.

“Maybe,” she starts, “you don’t lose your family in another Earth. In another life, they might be alive. But no matter what happened, you’re still my family, and nothing will change that.”

The wind continues, and all Sara can feel is sadness towards Rip, as unexpected as it was.

She wished he’d had more time, more of a chance to explain himself — family fought, but they stuck together. The Legends were family; nothing could change that.

But she’s got a life waiting for her on the waverider, in another time. She’s finishing his last chapter, and the footnote that she’d had in his (and the one he had in hers), is something she’s ultimately proud of.

“Goodbye, Rip Hunter.”

And she’s gone, as the wind continues to blow on that hill, of the dead man to whom she’d owed so much to.

**Author's Note:**

> Not quite sure what this is, but god, I miss ripsara.
> 
> Find me on tumblr @jlannister.


End file.
